“Even Town play better than this”

Throughout Russia’s vivid history the country has faced many challenges, but on Tuesday 6th April it faced one of the biggest yet. The Briers landed in Moscow.

After their initial fears (which ranged from the understandable – sorting out their visas, to the completely insane – mum’s worries over whether she would be able to buy milk and eggs) I think they’ve decided Russia isn’t as bad as they thought.

Anyway, this blog isn’t going to be a detailed account of the first three days of The Briers adventures (sorry Brier fans, below is a picture to satisfy your Brier needs) but instead will focus on football and camels.


The Briers on Red Square - two of my worlds colliding

On the day they arrived the quarter finals of the Champions League took place in Moscow (CSKA vs Inter Milan). My dad is an avid football fan. I am an avid football hater. He asked if we could get tickets and as it had been his birthday the day before I thought I should probably sacrifice 2 hours of my life to watch the stupid game. In the end I had to sacrifice 5 hours of my life because it took me 2 hours to find somewhere to buy the stupid tickets then 1 hour queuing outside the stadium to watch the stupid game. As you may be able to tell, I think football is stupid.

However as I am a model daughter I got the tickets and took dad to the match. In the end the game was quite dull and CSKA played pretty badly. After 6 minutes Inter Milan had scored a goal and (according to Dad) this meant the game was pretty much over for CSKA (apparently they needed to score 2 extra goals or something? He explained it to me about 3 times but, I have to confess, my brain just switches off when people talk about football and I fly away into a world where men kicking glorified sacks of air around a field is not important). I think CSKA really lost when they missed a penalty and Dad announced: “Even Town play better than this”, they might as well have just left the field there and then. Apparently the game was worth it though because it meant Dad got some use out of his Christmas present from me…


Wearing his scarf with pride. A true Muscovite after just 2 hours in the country.

In other news today we went to a space museum and saw a camel in a park next to it. Sometimes Russia renders me completely speechless (a difficult task) with its immense madness. I think my family finally understand what I mean when I talk about how crazy Russia is.